CHAPTER I

KALITAN TENAS


It was bitterly cold. Kalitan Tenas felt it more than he had in the long
winter, for then it was still and calm as night, and now the wind was
blowing straight in from the sea, and the river was frozen tight. A
month before, the ice had begun to break and he had thought the cold was
over, and that the all too short Alaskan summer was at hand. Now it was
the first of May, and just as he had begun to think of summer pleasures,
lo! a storm had come which seemed to freeze the very marrow of his bones.
However, our little Alaskan cousin was used to cold and trained to it,
and would not dream of fussing over a little snow-storm.

Kalitan started out to fish for his dinner, and though the snow came down
heavily and he had to break through the ice to make a fishing-hole, and
soon the ice was a wind-swept plain where even his own tracks were
covered with a white pall, he fished steadily on. He never dreamed of
stopping until he had fish enough for dinner, for, like most of his
tribe, he was persevering and industrious.

Kalitan was a Thlinkit, though, if you asked him, he would say he was
"Klinkit." This is a tribe which has puzzled wise people for a long
time, for the Thlinkits are not Esquimos, not Indians, not coloured
people, nor whites. They are the tribes living in Southeastern Alaska and
along the coast. Many think that a long, long time ago, they came from
Japan or some far Eastern country, for they look something like the